Developing intercultural competence using activities with different media

2.2. The role of media technologies in Developing intercultural competence of Student’s
The greatest change in message dissemination in recent history occurred with the introduction of computers and the Internet in the early 1990s. Since then, this drastic change of communication medium has significantly affected humans' perception of the media, the usage of time and space, and the reachability and control of the media. In the present age of digital communication, time has been compressed by reducing the distance between different points in space, and the sense of space has led people to feel that local, national, and global space becomes obsolete. In addition, the reachability of digital media can now extend to all people, instead of a limited audience.
This is significant because without the confinement of time and space, the control of message production and dissemination is no longer a privilege possessed only by church, state, and government, but instead, equally shared by all individuals. All these innovations in digital media, or so-called new media, have changed and continue to change the way we think, act, and live. For example, digitalization, as a hybridization of print and electronic media in a binary code, converts analog to digital that requires a completely different mode of production and distribution.
The impact of digital or new media on human society is demonstrated in the aspects of cognition, social effect, and a new form of aesthetics. Cognitively, new media demands a nonlinear nature and the creation of expectations for content, which directly influences the way people use media. Socially, the most manifested impact of new media is the effect of demassification, which denotes that the traditional design for a large, homogeneous audience is disappearing and being replaced by a specific and individual appeal, allowing the audience to access and create the message they wish to produce.
A day without access to new technologies, online tools and digital media is something many of us cannot imagine. We use Face book to keep in touch with friends, Twitter to follow the news, Pinterest to organize our hobbies, Instagram to share our pictures, WhatsApp and many other instant messaging systems to chat with friends, family and colleagues all over the world.
As mentioned above, the rapid development of new media has been the main force accelerating the trend of globalization in human society during the last few decades. With its distinctive and unique nature, new media has brought human interaction and society to a highly interconnected and complex level. Through, this convergence the mutual enhancement of new media and globalization has led to the transformation of almost all the aspects of human society. New media being considered "new" is not only because of its successful integration in the form of the traditional interpersonal and mass media, but also because of its new functions that enable individuals to equally control messages in interpersonal media, which allows them to control messages in mass media. New media functionally allows people to interact with multiple persons simultaneously with the ability to individualize messages in the process of interaction.
New media enjoys five distinctive characteristics: digitality, convergency, interactivity, hypertextuality, and virtuality.
- First, digitalization is the most prominent feature of new media. New media or digital media dematerializes media text by converting data from analog into digital form, which allows all kind of mathematical operations. New media also makes it possible for a large amount of information to be retrieved, manipulated, and stored in a very limited space.
- Second, new media converges the forms and functions of information, media, electronic communication, and electronic computing. The convergence power of new media can be easily demonstrated by the emergence of the Internet in terms of its powerful function embedded in computer information technologies and broadband communication networks.
- Third, the interactive function of new media with provides users a great freedom in producing and reproducing the content and form of the information during the interaction.
- Fourth, the hypertextuality of new media brings forth a global network center in which information can freely move around and spontaneously interconnect.
- Finally, the cyberspace formed by new media allows people to generate virtual experience and reality. The invisible cyberspace not only induces a gap between reality and virtuality, but also effectuates the free alternation of one's gender, personality, appearance, and occupation.
With globalization and advancements in communication technologies, cultures have converged like never before and began to influence each other. Especially with the increase of social media usage, it has become imperative to analyse influences of social media in intercultural communication. In this study, the role of social media in intercultural communication has been researched by both qualitative and quantitative analyses. The results acquired within this context are as follows: Qualitative and quantitative data obtained from the research shows that social media is quite an efficient instrument in the development of intercultural communication. People are able to communicate very rapidly via social media and discover and adapt to intercultural values much more conveniently. Beyond being a small village for people, the world has turned into a single scope in which space, speed and cultures meet.
Intercultural competence is the ability to develop targeted knowledge, skills and attitudes that lead to visible behavior and communication that are both effective and appropriate in intercultural interactions. The ability to communicate and interact effectively and appropriately with people from different cultures.
The knowledge, skills, and dispositional attributes necessary to effectively and appropriately communicate with individuals from other cultures.
Intercultural communication skills are those required to communicate, or share information, with people from other cultures and social groups. While language skills may be an important part of intercultural communication, they are by no means the only requirement. Intercultural communication also requires an understanding that different cultures have different customs, standards, social mores, and even thought patterns. Finally, good intercultural communication skills requires a willingness to accept differences these and adapt to them.
The multimedia technologies proved its effectiveness in the present training experiment, when considering the development of the cognitive component of intercultural competence in particular. According to the students' self-assessment, their intercultural adjustment and interaction skills also developed a little and their attitudes toward the foreign became a little more positive, in this order. To be able to state whether the students are really able to apply these skills and attitudes in practice, observation and interviews involving host nationals in the target cultures would be required.